


We Few, We Happy Few

by toujours_nigel



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-24
Updated: 2010-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-06 15:42:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>written for the prompt: Harry Potter, any character, institutional homophobia and/or transphobia amongst the Aurors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Few, We Happy Few

“Of the three years of Auror training, the first will be devoted to theoretical study, and will mostly consist of lectures and practice-duels, the second will, with these, include patrolling under supervision, while, in their third year, trainees will be paired with Aurors, even, in some cases, Instructors, and expected to patrol and generally partake of an Auror’s duties.”

—The Aurors Handbook, (London: Ministerium Press, 1925), Pg. 1

 

***

But those are the rules of peace and this is war and they are here, six months out of school, huddled together against the December cold, and if James—_mine, mine, mine, and how stupid is he to still think that?_—bleeds out under his hands, stops breathing, and already he’s struggling for every puff of air, he’s not sure what he will do, not sure that he can do anything.

The filth he is sitting in—_never backed down from a fight before, this must be how it feels to be Peter_—and the coarse comfort of the concrete wall abrading his skin, and the limp weight in his arms, held against his heart—_James will not die like this, not like this, dear God, please, Jamie, don’t die on me_—are not, in themselves, nor all together, enough to keep him aware of them, and he falls into an exhausted sleep, body curled ’round James’ unresponsive one—_corpse_, Bella’s voice sneers in his mind, it’s her out there, fighting Aurors, and Lucius, perhaps, if he hasn’t forgotten the way he turns to duck a spell—for all that they could be killed in their sleep like animals in a slaughter-house—_like animals beneath his paws, and his teeth and Remus’ tearing into their warm, living flesh_—and has to be shaken awake roughly by Gideon Prewett—_how easily could that have been Bella, or Lucius, and how would he have lived, how would he have died, with James’ blood on his hands?_—and side-along Apparated to Auror Headquarters.

 

***

 

Auror HQ is warm, and well-lit and comforting, and he can sit on a bed in the Med. Offices and nobody’s trying to kill him, and somebody’s taken James from him, but he can still see him, and Padfoot is content to keep an eye out and let Sirius do the talking.

“How many Death Eaters were there, Black?”

“Three, at first,” he says, head twisted to one side to accommodate Brown’s hand on his head—perfectly placed to twist it off, and he sees no real reason to trust the man will not do so if he proves irritating enough. “More came once Gideon and McKinnon arrived, and James went down.”

“And how, exactly,” asks Savage—_Roger Savage, arsehole extraordinaire, and Fabian had been spot-on, in characterisation_—a smirk playing ‘round his lips, “did _James_ go down?”

_In blood, and screaming, and his legs twisted and… _“The Death Eaters used what I believe was a modified _sectum_ _sempra_, and that, followed by a _confringo_, meant that we were cornered and unable to move.”

“You were hurt too.” Brown remarks, dabbing a particularly nasty ointment on one deep gash. “Burnt more than cut, though.”

Savage’s eyebrows go up at that, and he grits his teeth and glares at Brown as the man twists his head at an angle that cannot be normal. “James was lying very close to where fire exploded due to the blasting spell.”

“And you could not have bespelled it or him, why, Black?”

He raises his wand hand in mute explanation. Bella hit him again, after the confringo, and his thumb droops from the cut that could have severed it entirely from his palm, had he moved any slower.

Brown tuts over it, and he finds his hand taken in a grip that hurts more than the wound, but Savage’s face shows no compassion. “You’re listed as marginally ambidextrous, Black.”

“Didn’t think, sir.” _Couldn’t think, not like that, not then, with James’ robes singeing, and just because Savage has had all compassion and humanity surgically removed…_

“Of course.” And he’s stunned for all of a second by the fact that Savage seems to actually have a heart. “Your bumboy might’ve got a scratch. I can see how that’d have affected your faculties.”

Savage leaves while he’s still gaping, as winded as if he’s been hit with a Bludger, or, more likely these days, a stunner. Brown finishes dabbing at his hand and twists his head around again. He can just about see James, swathed in what looks like the Med. Offices’ entire supply of bandages. Brown jabs his wand, hard, at the still-bleeding cut decorating his face from temple to jaw—_Remus’ face, pale and scored and scarred_—and it stops seeping blood as though afraid of him. “You’ve lost a fair bit of blood, Black.”

“You said I was more burnt.”

“All up your left arm,” Brown agrees, “up to here,” and presses down, wand-tip hard, on his collar-bone. And the skin sloughs off and is new and pink. “But you’ve done a fair bit of damage to your face, too.” Pressed close, his chin stabbing the flesh of his shoulder to get a proper look, and Brown’s eyes, when he looks up, are colder than Savage’s. “Hold still, Black.”

“I am,” he retorts, Padfoot coiled for a spring, inside him—_run away, leave and never return, he, they, want to hurt you worse than your mother ever did_.

“Try harder.” Brown’s moved away, though, and that’s indescribable relief—he hadn’t noticed, till Savage spoke, but now he can’t stop noticing. “Here.” He slips the ointment in his robes-pocket, makes to put it on. “That should keep your pretty face looking fine.”

He jumps off the bed, and over to James’, which has Du Lac hovering beside it. Arthur Du Lac, unfortunately named, though it’s better than Lance, at least, looks up and grins. And he’s friends with Du Lac, in passing, but even that seems to be a bit mocking—_is this how Remus feels?_ “Hold on a second, Black. _Ennervate_.”

James’ eyes come open in a slow blink—_Prongs to Potter, just like that, every time, fawn-eyes closing and the lashes sweeping up over human ones_. “Can we go, then?”

Du Lac has the most ridiculously girly mouth—_come out for drinks, just friends, just us, we’ll have fun and I won’t mock your name, you poor pretty boy_—and it tightens briefly as he looks over James, eyes flicking rapidly, fingertips ghosting over his face, arm, stopping, wand clutched tight, on his knee—_James, you idiot, you idiot, why would you charge towards her, don’t you know she likes torturing people? _

“Well?” This from James, first word in longer than he knows or wants to, and he doesn’t—refuses to—remember the last ones.

“Yes, yes, hold on, Potter, can’t have you collapsing moment you get out of the doors, Brown’d have my hide.” Du Lac had been two years their senior and a Hufflepuff boy and… “Hmmm, looks okay. You stay together, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he snaps, and the ‘what of it?’ must be audible enough, because James turns to look at him, startled.

“So give him this in the morning and before he goes to sleep, tonight,” Du Lac snaps right back.

He nods and helps James up and off the bed and hauls him out and away and to their home as fast as he thinks he can.

And James, who has known him—_thank Merlin that all pure-bloods are related, and their mothers had liked each other, once_—since before either of them could properly speak, takes one look at his face and clenches his teeth and doesn’t let a single groan escape his lips, for all that it must still hurt.

 

***

 

The flat they share—Sirius’ flat, but Godrics’ isn’t exactly convenient for a daily commute, Floo notwithstanding, and Morgana knows James’ done enough for him—is dark and close and he has James’ cloak draped over a chair, and the man himself halfway out his shirt before the Floo in the living-room flares to life and Lily steps through it, still in her Apprentice Healer’s robes.

“Du Lac firecalled you, did he?” He moves back two steps, knees hitting the bed and goes down, too tired to remember that this is James’ bed, and James’ girl, and he really shouldn’t.

“I did him.” Lily’s hands are sure and gentle on James, pulling his shirt off without grazing the bandages on him, starting on his trousers before Sirius remembers—_how foul memory plays him_—to avert his face.

“Sorry I couldn’t make it,” James offers, hand heavy on Lily’s shoulder as he steps out of the pants, face grimacing at how little the right knee bends. “Got caught up.”

Lily hmmms and tsks and pushes James—_gently, gently_—towards the bed and he rolls off it and stands around awkwardly, because Lily’s so much better at this, and she doesn’t understand, quite, what it means, being Padfoot, and he’s always careful to keep it hidden, not so much a secret as something best unmentioned in mixed company.

James has been propped up on pillows—arm still bandaged, knee wrapped in something he doesn’t recognise but Lily evidently does—before he thinks to get out, and shut the door behind him, and lean on it, trying not to succumb to the tremendous temptation to morph into Padfoot and barrel back in and curl up on the foot of James’ bed. Done it often enough—Aunt Dorea, Charlus, Uncle Alphard, running away, coming out, all the weddings and deaths and near-betrayals—that he physically needs to do it, needs James’ hand fitted against his skull, his paw on James’ hip, head butted against the hollow of his hand, dogandboy one near-single entity. But the girl inside has a bigger—_newer, frailer_—claim than he, and he goes to his cold bed and determinedly hears—twitches, startles, awakens at—nothing at all.

 

***

 

“Moony?”

“Sirius!” Some more of the towering piles fall off their tottering perches, with a crash, and, in one case, a dull thump that sounds alarmingly like leather meeting flesh. “In the back.”

“How suggestive of you.”

Remus surfaces, offending volume in hand, hair grey with dust. “You’re early.” _Is that how you’ll look, Moony, in twenty years time, when your hair has faded and those scars are there to stay?_

“Am I, now?” _Sorry, Moony, Auror HQ was driving me slowly mad. Flick-flick-flick, all those cold eyes, implicitly calling him a bad dog._

“And I’m unprepared.”

“Also,” he comments, close enough to peer down at Remus, “apparently a girl, now.”

“Sexist, much?” He’s handed a book, and backs off as Remus straightens, “Lily’d smack you.”

“Evans is more of a man than you ever were… or James, really.”

“Misogynist, too.”

“I’m the full-fledged stereotype, aren’t I? Misogynist. Chauvinist. Faggot.”

“Quite.” The book’s tugged away again, and Remus scrambles up the nearest ladder, speaking from its safe eminence. “Faggot?”

“Oh, y’know. Shirt-lifter. Ponce. Fairy. Fruit. Homosexual,” he finishes, leaning heavily on the bookshelf Remus is doing strange and possibly illegal things to. _There’s a word for you, Moony, it’s Latin and possibly hard to pronounce, and it says you fancy books more than boys or girls or both._

“You missed gay.”

“Well, I don’t particularly feel it at the moment.”

Remus descends into view, one hand scrabbling furiously in a back-pocket. “Chocolate?”

“I’m not twelve, you _do_ know?”

“Sorry. That’s the last time you let the name-calling bother you. Thought you might’ve regressed.”

_Good chocolate, no matter why it’s offered, must never be wasted._ Edict three of the Book of Moony Lupin, just after ‘_Never do anything, unasked, for Moony that he will notice_’; and ‘_Jokes about times of month are never funny, no, Sirius, not even then_’. He’s rather fond of T.B.o.M.L. and obediently bites the Frog’s head off before handing it back. “Never been about Prongs, though.”

“Well, no.” The front right leg goes into Remus’ mouth. “But he’s always been as painfully straight as the stick lodged in Lily’s arse.”

He waits till the torso has been bitten off. “Which one?” and, really, Remus choking always makes the day brighter.

“Classy, Padfoot.”

“Always.” At which point, he gets pulled into helping stack books. Mr. Fell has a lot of books, mostly Bibles.

“This mightn’t be entirely bad, y’know?”

He glares up—_smart Remus, perched on high, just out of reach_—and debates whether pulling his wand would be a bad idea. “How?”

“Well, now the—the red silk grimoire, Padders—girls will stop making eyes at you and—thanks—the boys might start, yes?”

_Arthur Du Lac, the only kind eyes, all day. Kind eyes in a remarkably pretty face._ “And—fuck, this is heavy—would you be one?” Remus gives him a Look, reminiscent of Dumbledore at his least indulgent, and he shuts up and passes him books.

“It’s worse because they’re Aurors, somehow.”

“Because they’re the good guys?”

“Yes. I mean, they’re fighting against discrimination, aren’t they, and even my mother wouldn’t object to this, and it’s… twelve?”

“Twelve,” Remus chimes in, and hands him another, slightly linty, Chocolate Frog.

 

***

 

“I see your bumboy’s healed.” A pile of files drops on his desk. “Tell him to shoulder his half of the work.”

“Tell him yourself, Wood.”

“Tell me what?”

“Stop leaning on Back before you get split up.”

“You’re really not getting any, are you?” Wood glares and mutters incoherently. _Flick-flick-flick, all those watching eyes, not one pair kind; stay away, James._ “And you. Didn’t we already talk about fawning on me in public, Sirius?”

“Your beauty, my James, is irresistible.” _And here we go again, you and I._ “I try, but I simply cannot help myself.”

“Just going to remove temptation a bit, then.” James leans over their shared desk, grabs half the files, and pulls his hair under the guise of ruffling it. “I’ve had a long day catching up on lectures and having Gideon beat the shit out of me, so I’ll ask later, okay?”

“Of course, my own love.” _Flutter, flutter, flutter, such lovely eyelashes you have, Miss Black_. James shoots him a look that promises merciless interrogation, and stomps away to Kingsley’s desk.

“Well, that was entertaining.”

“Glad you liked it.”

“Really, Sirius.”

“Really, Fabian.”

Prewett folds himself into James’ chair. “Was the display necessary?”

“Yes.” _You of all people, Fabian._

“Why?”

“It made me feel pretty.”

“Do try and be…”

“Oh, but I am.”

“You cannot just do that.”

“Hand on my heart, Fabi, I did not know that.” _Come on, look at me, go on, do._

“Look, Sirius, there is a thing called discretion.”

“Is there?”

“Nobody objects to you…” _can’t even say it?_ _For shame, Fabian._

“Could’ve fooled me.” _You had no kind eyes, and I did look to see, Fabian, and you couldn’t even stand to look at me, yesterday, or the day before._

“You should just… it’s a place of work, Sirius, and…”

“I must go to St. Mungo’s, then, because I could’ve sworn Wood was raving about his girl, not two hours ago.”

“Sirius.”

“Maybe when I’m there I’ll have a little chat with Caradoc Dearborn.”

“You’re too young to understand.”

“Clearly.”

“There are things worth dying for, Sirius.”

“And things worth lying for, clearly, but I’ve not found any.”

“You can’t fight this sort of thing, Black. Especially not now, not when we’re fighting already. What would you have all of us do, protest that we’re being ill-treated because someone makes a remark, when we’re here to resist Voldemort? There’re things bigger than the self!” _And you’re getting hysterical, Fabian. Shades of my mother, how apt._

“I’d have you do nothing at all.” Arranging the files properly takes a little while. “I myself, on the other hand...”

“You can’t be…”

“And yet, I am.”

“So you’ll simply give in and stop fighting?”

“Inspirational as your speech was, Fabian, darling, I’ll have to say yes. I don’t really need the job.” _Up, Black_. “And the Order does its fair share of fighting; for all that Dumbledore leads it.” Fabian flinches when he leans in close enough to kiss. “Remember Dumbledore? Wears a lot of purple, likes socks a bit too much?”


End file.
